<!--  UPLOAD AS FILES
Determines if media should be uploaded as files or as database blobs.
Default: false
-->

<setting name="Media.UploadAsFiles" value="false" />

<!--  MEDIA - USE ITEM PATHS FOR URLS
This setting controls if item paths are used for constructing media URLs.
If false, short ids will be used.
Default value: true
-->

<setting name="Media.UseItemPaths" value="true" />

Each time, it would import only a few files and it would stop. I tried killing all processes, lower the CPU and Memory usage but that didn’t make any difference.

According to the friendly and helpful Sitecore Customer Service Rep, Upload folder is managed by Sitecore.Resources.Media.UploadWatcher. Each time a file is added to the upload folder, UploadWatcher creates similar structure in media library. It is not a separate task or webservice, just simple uploading job started by “Created” event on filesystem.

The reason for this issue is that Sitecore uses System.IO.FileSystemWatcher object for file uploading (Sitecore use it to watch changes); when a lot of files are added at once, the FileSystemWatcher’s internalBuffer fills up and starts skipping files.

Checkout this article http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.filesystemwatcher.aspx

As a result of my Ticket, they created a workaround which is available at http://sdn.sitecore.net/scrapbook/sitecore%20doesn%E2%80%99t%20upload%20files%20from%20upload%20folder.aspx. You would need a Sitecore developer account to login.

As a workaround you need to use Sitecore.Support.322918.dll file. The workaround increases the InternalBuffer to avoid the unexpected skipping of files.

1. Add the string <add type=”Sitecore.Support.UploadWatcher,Sitecore.Support.322918″ name=”SitecoreUploadWatcher”/> before each occurrence of the string <add type=”Sitecore.Resources.Media.UploadWatcher, Sitecore.Kernel” name=”SitecoreUploadWatcher”/>

(see <system.webServer>/<modules> section and <system.web>/<httpModules> section)

2. Comment out all such lines: <add type=”Sitecore.Resources.Media.UploadWatcher, Sitecore.Kernel” name=”SitecoreUploadWatcher”/>

3. Put the Sitecore.Support.322918.dll file into the /bin folder of your web site

4. In the web.config file, add the following string under the <settings> section

<setting name=”FileSystemWatcherBufferSize” value=”4096000″/>

Such value seems to be enough for 5000 files, but you can increase it further to be sure that even files with very long names are uploaded.

For example:

If the full file path contains 100 symbols, it takes 200 bytes, 32000 files will take 6400000 bytes (6250 kb), so the setting value should be:

<setting name=”FileSystemWatcherBufferSize” value=”6400000 “/>

As always, please backup before making any significant changes.

P.S.: UploadWatcher calls MediaManager.Creator.FileCreated(filePath); – you can try to fire the same method with path to the missing folder as parameter. There is another methos for FolderCreated as well.

Hope this helps. Credit goes to Sitecore and its Customer Service Reps.

If recent and continuing developments with the Apple App Store for iPhone and the iPod TYouch are any indication, then Apple is taking on the protectionist policies more commonly associated with those big, clunky, running-scared companies that Apple has traditionally loved to hate (Think Microsoft  and IBM).

The recent desertion of Joe Hewitt from the Facebook App for iPhone is a great example of how those who value open, creative and unrestricted access are being increasingly put off by Apple’s corporate policies.

Hewitt is not just “one of the developers” on the Facebook for iPhone app, he is the application. And he bolted from the project – not because he doesn’t like what he was doing, but entirely because of Apple’s review policies. (See http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/joe-hewitt-developer-of-facebooks-massively-popular-iphone-app-quits-the-project/ for more).

The repressive and protectionist policies of Apple (and let’s don’t forget – AT&T behind the scenes) is disturbing not only because it is so contrary to the supposed ethos of Apple and all that it stands for, but also because Apple is the standard for smart phones and application development for smartphones.

If Apple is able to continue their policies that value profit over innovation, then other platforms will feel free to adopt similar models – the standard has been set. It only takes a look at how quickly airlines jumped on the bandwagon to charge customers to check a bag to see that oppressive reviews of new applications could be in the works for every smartphone platform.

Don’t think it can’t happen – three years ago, did it even cross you mind that you might one day have to pay an extra $25 just to take a suitcase along when you flew to grandma’s for a week?

And the other frightening thought in all of this – where does Apple’s innovation go from here? Can we expect more trendsetting and ground breaking products from a company that has joined the ranks of the “profit at all costs” behemoths? Not likely.

As we all know, Google is committed to retaining that top billing, and they have responded to Bing and created some innovations of their own. Bottom line for both search engines is more relevant results for their users, and that means that SEO – search engine optimization — is even more important than ever.

While details will be coming forward for the next many months, many bloggers and some other sites have noticed a drop in their SERP rankings with Caffeine and Bing. This doesn’t need to happen, however.

In fact, smaller websites actually have a better chance of raising their rankings, if they use carefully targeted SEO.

Relevant Content
Good content becomes even more important than it has been in the past. If your site can match more precisely what the user wants to find, then you have a better chance of a high ranking.

Be specific in your content pages, and they will have a better chance of rising to the top. Carefully choose your keywords; if anything, specific keywords have become more important.

Be sure to include long tail keywords that get specific about your offerings: red mardi gras beads for parties instead of mardi gras beads or party beads. Think about brands, too: Canon digital cameras instead of digital cameras.

The titles of your pages are important. Each page should have a unique title specifically matched to the content you’re featuring. And you don’t want to ignore the Meta descriptions, even though they still don’t figure into the SEO searches. But if your page lands high up on that SERP, then you want to have an engaging, accurate and catchy Meta description to encourage the click.

The bottom line – although it will take more months to really see how Caffeine and Bing are going to respond, SEO continues to be highly important to web design. Money spent on SEO is money well invested, with the new search engines as much as the old.

Although only about 20 percent of internet users use the Firefox browser, many of those users are the serious internet surfers. Those in the industry almost universally prefer the open source app to the Microsoft browser.

So when Mozilla announced in 2008 that they would soon release a mobile version of their browser, they generated some buzz. There were some stutter steps with the first versions, but as with all Firefox products, the bugs get worked out pretty quickly.

The latest release is Fennec Alpha 1, and it has been revamped with a CSS user interface. What does this mean? Well, even though the browser only works on Windows Mobile Smart Phones like the HTC Touch Pro currently, the CSS interface means that it will be easily adapted to a wide range of different devices, unlike the original version.

So, if you have another operating system on your phone, no fear. Firefox is making use of  that CSS based interface to create mobile browsers for other systems. Recently, a Firefox official noted that Symbian phones make up nearly half of the smartphone sales, so Firefox will need to “have a presence on the Symbian platform.” So expect a Symbian version to be officially announced in the near future.

Still, there are plenty of other smartphone owners who prefer Firefox as a browser – will Fennec be coming soon to an iPhone near you? Probably not – and you android users need not hold your breath, either.

Firefox officials cite licensing and technical issues that prevent them from developing Fennec for iPhone, RIM and Android. Still, it will be great to see if all the things we love about the PC Firefox browser are integrated into Fennec quickly enough for them to gain a big market share.

I already have 7 questions on my mind. What shall be the minimum hardware requirements for this OS? Will the support for drivers be better than the previous releases of Microsoft? Will the new OS beat Vista and rival operating systems on performance issues? What about security? Phew!

Microsoft claims that 7 include “hundreds of improvements based on your feedback” and it runs smoothly, is more reliable and responsive. To some, these promises from Microsoft wouldn’t really matter because of the fact that one size won’t fit all. Though the company is in the process of making high claims about the OS, you simply cannot satisfy each and every user. Moreover, on a lighter note, hundreds of improvements are gateways to a hundred more bugs. I guess Microsoft has taken care of that. We’ll just have to wait and watch.
A fresh OS always brings about fresh thoughts on driver support. If you have been successfully using certain hardware in Vista, it will work on Windows 7. Yes, Vista and 7 drivers are compatible. This might be good news for users who are thinking about migrating from Vista to 7. But if you are using Windows XP, then your hardware vendor must explicitly provide drivers specifically written for 7, for your hardware to properly work.

I had played around with the release candidate some time back and only came to the conclusion that it is slightly more stable than Windows Vista SP1. The UI and the overall navigability of 7 are not strikingly different, but quite similar to Vista SP1 with a few changes thrown around. However, the boot up time and shut down time was quicker than Vista SP1, a statistic that wouldn’t bother me much; I would be more interested in performance. I wouldn’t prefer to comment on that unless the full stable release is on the stands.
Simplicity is sarcastically apparent with 7. The problem is that experienced XP users (in some cases, Vista users too) will have to bear with a few extra mouse clicks to reach to their destination. For example, the “run” option is no more on the Start Menu. You have to search for run, and then click on it from the search results to open up the run window. Moreover in the control panel, you have to put in a few extra mouse clicks to actually select what you would want to do.

4 gigs of RAM is a recommended hardware requirement for Windows 7. Now that’s where things hurt.  Anyway, enthusiasts would go in for the required upgrade, I know. The free release candidate had expired on 1st June. Don’t worry if you’ve missed out. You still have the beta version to download and test.

Let’s see if the guys at Microsoft get lucky with the version 7 this time!

For businesses that consider their website and their customers who contact them online to be an integral part of their business, using a content management system is only logical. It will allow those businesses to provide a seamless, high quality online experience that open source or low-end solutions simply can’t provide.

For many of our customers, their website is a strategic part of their business. The added security and performance features of a CMS allow these businesses to focus the website and the usability features that make the customer experience truly superior.

By giving developers and content providers a simple to use and intuitive system, a CMS allows the marketing department or the sales department to create website content and design elements of the site. These professionals understand the customers and their needs better than developers or IT departments. With a CMS, the control goes to the people with the ideas, not only to the people with the programming expertise

The easy integration with business applications also provides a great opportunity for businesses to provide a better integration of Customer Relationship Management software and Enterprise Resource Planning software, as well as any analytics tools.

Because you, the company, are in control of the content and the programs and tools that you use on your site, you are able to better tailor your customers’ experience on your website, offer them seamless integration of eCommerce products and Web 2.0 feature, and fully optimize your site for search engines, so current and new customers can find you easily.

With so many advantages for developers and for the end customers, its easy to see why Content Management Systems are increasingly popular.

We think we offer you the best possible CMS with Sitecore. While there are still features they can improve, as we’ve mentioned here before, overall they provide a powerful program that is fully scalable so it can grow with your company. It’s also easy to use and forward thinking, constantly updating the product and forecasting the next trend, then responding to it.

Their “Gold” partner status with Microsoft ensures continuing support for all its best features.

If you haven’t utilized the power of a great CMS to provide your customer with the best possible experience online, I’d suggest giving it a try today.

Sitecore recently identified the three key web content management trends for 2009 – do any of these sound like goals for your company this year? If so, let us help you implement them using the seamless integration tools Sitecore provides.

The first trend is the growth of ecommerce elements. Companies want to integrate more and more ecommerce tools into their websites. One of the most popular tools for businesses to implement is InSite Commerce, a program that integrates ecommerce solutions. It allows a business to manage multiple websites and allows a great deal of flexibility for customers.

The other top ecommerce solution used by businesses is Microsoft Commerce Server, which offers intuitive tools for integrating ecommerce solutions including an out of the box shopping solution.

The second major trend for web content management is integrating portals into public websites. Microsoft’s SharePoint was the most frequently used type of portal. Using portals on a public website allows a company to provide the customers with quick, easy access to important information. These portals can be customized according to the needs of your customers and your business.

The final trend for 2009 in web content management is increased implementation of Web 2.0 functionalities. Sitecore’s content management system is uniquely situated to effortlessly add applications like wikis, blogs, forums, and surveys to a website. While Web 2.0 is an ongoing topic of conversation, Sitecore found that companies have increased integration of Web 2.0 functionalities at a rate that is 250 percent higher than last year, so the pace of Web 2.0 integration is growing rapidly.

Other trends that are continuing from 2008 are continuing compatibility with the .NET network and making websites compatible with mobile computing.

With Sitecore, Webdatamation can keep your website ahead of the curve in implementing and integrating any elements you’d like into your company website.

The basic architecture of this cloud computing is a massive network of interconnected servers where the web applications reside. The user accessing these applications need not be aware of the physical location of the application’s computer. This not only reduces the cost of installing licensed software at the end user’s computer but also saves the cost associated with deploying, maintaining and upgrading of different business technologies.

I guess by now you have been able to understand what Cloud Computing is all about and would like to know how one can access such services. There are a number of companies who offer such services. Prominent among them are Amazon with their Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Google with their Google App Engine. There are also many internet service provider companies who rent space and time on these servers. The amount they charge for this is based on processing time or disk storage. Microsoft has also launched its own recently called AZURE. Azure offers service platforms for web developers, corporate developers, ISVs, system integrators and business. Though it is still not clear about how you need to pay for it but is believed that it will be based on pay by use on processing time, disk storage and bandwidth.

Cloud Computing is a relatively new concept promising the most optimal utilization of computing resources. However we are waiting in baited breadth to see the silver lining on it!

Certainly, most of the venture capitalists I’ve talked to at the Web 2.0 Summit have said they are shying away from companies that are based on the idea of growing an audience now and figuring out how to make money later. However, after listening to the presentations here over the past three days, it is clear that some of the key concepts of the Web 2.0 movement are, in fact, taking root in deep ways.

One of the most significant trends is how the big companies that make very complicated systems are reworking them using the principles of Web 2.0 companies, particularly the notion of programs that talk to other programs. They are breaking up their technologies into discrete modules that can work alongside data and applications from others.

Facebook can be credited with taking the first step to open up large parts of its service to third parties. Last year, it let their applications on its site. Now, through its upcoming Facebook Connect service, it will let other companies build applications that use its list of people and who their friends are to deliver new services.

Yahoo, a vastly more complex site, is restructuring to allow others to use many parts of its service: the content, the search engine, the social relationships embedded in e-mail, and such. That means that Yahoo information can be used on other sites, and developers can create applications to run on Yahoo. “If and when we can get our 500 million users on our platform, the power is huge,” Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s chief executive, told the conference. This, of course, involves reworking much of the software behind the site in order to connect politely and consistently with other companies.

Not to be outdone, Dave Girouard, who manages Google’s efforts to sell services to big enterprises, said that Google, too, developing a platform. “We want to you to have the same access to Google that our internal developers do,” Mr. Girouard said. He offered no details.

In a completely different market, Salesforce.com is transforming itself from service dedicated to tracking sales leads to a platform that allows many more options. Marc Benioff, its chief executive, told the conference about the company’s new platform, Force.com. Now customers can run their own applications on Salesforce’s computers, mixing its systems with those from other developers. The point is to help companies develop internal systems, Web sites for the public and even applications to run on social networks like Facebook.

By far the most ambitious effort along these lines is Microsoft’s new operating system called Azure, which is being developed under the direction of Ray Ozzie.

In the broadest sense, Azure is a system that enables a program to run on personal computers, on mobile devices and on Microsoft’s own data centers without losing track of important data. But as I talked to Azure’s developers here, it was clear that Microsoft is trying to incorporate both strands of Web 2.0 thinking into the new operating system.

First, it is designed to interact with many other systems. It can pull in data from other places and formats and create widgets that add features to Web sites. Microsoft insists that Azure will be more respectful of the various standards used on the Internet than the company’s other products have been.

Moreover, Microsoft has built what it claims are industrial-strength versions of some of the social features common to Web 2.0 applications, such as a combined list of updates modeled after the Facebook newsfeed but designed to keep track of relationships among hundreds of millions of people.

It’s too early to say which, if any, of these big-company efforts to build platforms will succeed. Some may well collapse of their own complexity. Others may be attempts by their creators to chase buzzwords. In 2001, you wouldn’t have been able to predict the Web sites that would prevail.

But I do think that we can count on moving into a world where very complicated computer systems are designed to talk to people and to each other, using the ideas developed in the Web 2.0 era, with or without vowels.

With over 500,000 registered users and 5.0 million downloads in late 2007 (as per official sources), DotNetNuke has become one of today’s largest and effective open source CMS. It has been written in Microsoft’s VB.NET for the ASP.NET (also by Microsoft) framework. With an extensible core and a set of additional customization features that include modules and skins, DotNetNuke can be used to develop, deploy and efficiently manage websites, including extranets and intranets.

What makes DotNetNuke stand apart form the other CMS’s is the way in which it allows you to implement modules and skins, in order to customize your web application(s). Without any expertise of development in ASP.NET, web designers can develop skins for an application and it is this feature completely separates design from content. Only basic knowledge of HTML and understanding the inherent steps to prepare and implement the skins themselves is necessary. Skins have been implemented in DotNetNuke as basic HTML files with placeholders that serve as templates for content, menus and other GUI features. This includes support files such as JavaScript, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and images.

The DotNetNuke architecture can be extended to provide an additional set of features and functionalities by the use of pluggable modules. The core includes almost a dozen of them that is included with the distribution and other modules can be downloaded from the official DotNetNuke website. These modules include pluggable add-ons some of which are forums, blogs, wiki, e commerce systems and mailing lists.

There have also been some criticisms associated with this CMS. The instructions for creating an appropriate module are cumbersome. A very important feature that lacks in DotNetNuke is the ability to dynamically localize the content of your website. There is no provision for providing content in languages other than English. There has also been debate on the fact that some of its older modules do not work as advertised.

However recently, the quality of the newer DotNetNuke releases have improved and are more stable compared to the earlier releases. The official portal features regular updates. Moreover, DotNetNuke has an impressive fan following. It has grown more and more popular with the passage of time. There are a number of online user groups available for assistance where you can learn more about the DotNetNuke platform.

I remember playing the “Duke Nukem” game once. Speaking of CMS’s, I often DotNetNuke!